INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Nine.

Chapter nine

Fritz was incredulous, but he did not spare his newfound acquaintence another moment of his precious attention.

He glanced up at the clock overlooking the neighbouring cubicle. The time was 11:30 pm all ready. 'I can't believe this,' thought Fritz as he ambled down the aisle, the closed door to the angular spiral staircase approaching him. He didn't dare to look out the windows lining his side of the building from top to front, feeling as though at any moment one might rupture and feeling (although he acknowledged the absurdity of the phobia) as though he would be blown out of the building with the air in the office escaping like a gale into the vacuum of the obsidian night.

His reflection followed him along the corridor, appearing from black, diagonal bars of night segregated by the pearly, whiskey-yellow lights of the sulfur overlooking lamps. Fritz avoided his eyes as if at all costs.

His hand reminded him of a tiny, rosy flower, whiter where the skin was tighter, as he clutched the sterile gray knob of the frank door. It was at that moment that he felt as though whatever monster had been dogging him had suddenly pounced on him. Some part of his mind that he had never known or had neglectingly forgotten that he had flung open like a door opening out of a darkness where one was to find a door, revealing a reenactment played in memory of an episode from a Discovery Channel program set in a trailer parked in the African Savannah, owned by two American, bearded, brothers, beer-besotten, having in common only that, their blood and their mutual intent upon finding the lion first, now finding the lion an uninvited guest now within, its hind claws digging into the ribcage of the brother occupying the bottom bunk opposite the entrance as the upper half of its body paid visit to the top bunk.

Fritz felt all of a sudden as though his kidney stones had fallen through the fabrics of his large intestines and were now lodged in the midst and within his rectal muscles, like bars of solid soap unyielding at the bottom of a progressively flooding toilet bowl.

He turned to see his own reflection glaring at him in terror as an invisible bird seemed to tear into his pectoral muscles. One more moment, and this imaginary raptor would fly him through the window and release him to have the black pavement promptly greet him with a bone-crushing embrace.

As every breath that he had hoarded throughout the day in his body seemed to escape his sinews like smoke evacuating a chimney with the extinguishment of the fire at its root, Fritz allowed himself just barely the humiliatingly painful pangs in his knees of not collapsing to the gray, carpeted floor.

Rather than opening the door, he strained every convolution in his beloved brain in an attempt that he knew to be futile to Will the door to remain closed as though the very desperation of this hope could dissuade any intruders from it in the absence of a lock.

Like the losing, inebriated refugee of a fist fight, set in the nightfallen parking lot flanking the left side of a crowded bar, he ambled to his home in the cubicle.

Fritz, deliberate on grabbing his laptop, contemplated, momentarily, if he was or was not going to exit the cubicle. He allowed himself to collapse on the floor of the nurturing square cell and, longing to shut a non-existent fourth door behind him, he rolled tactfully into a lying position from which he fumbled on the floor under his desk for his laptop.

Withdrawing it, he did not dare to look up at where the coveted fourth wall would show him instead the austere black window, until a few seconds had elapsed.

Digging elbows gently into the gray artificial grass, he allotted himself a look at that intimidating obsidian window from a position reminiscent of a fallen soldier.

The window stared at him like the black eye of a giant squid, a window into the Soul of an apathetic night.

How would he escape the top floor? The prospect of getting up and stepping into the corridor seemed, to him, akin in judgement to stepping out onto a freeway.

Getting to his feet suddenly, he climbed onto his desk gripping the wall of his cubicle, and peered slowly over the argile edifice, feeling as though he were surfacing from a sea and emerging into the light of a burning shipwreck.

The door to the spine of the building remained locked. He squinted at it for about fifteen seconds, squinting with irregular muscle tension in his eyes, testing every possible different way of looking at the door and compiling, upon descent again into the swimming pool of his cubicle, the crowded memories of the rapid experiments into a whole like a Cubist painting. The verdict was definite: The door was closed.

Yet an apparently mad part of his psyche allowed him no solace. I must be going mad, thought Fritz. The door couldn't be closed still. Somehow, he knew, or otherwise felt, that it was open.

Fritz, at that moment, the laptop firmly pressed between his armpit and his protective hand, hopped down from the desk. His feet, having just moments ago dangled a few inches from the desk, landed on the floor. He sprinted straight at the black window, stopping just short of contact with it, turned an angle, the ominous door behind him, and sprinted away from it.

Within seconds, he dodged the peering gaze of the door, escaping into a perpendicular corridor that ran through the cubicles and culminated in a brown elevator door.

Dm.A.A.

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Eight.

      Chapter eight

The phone call came at ten thirty. He leapt about an inch into the air when he heard it. Trying not to tremble but unable to stifle a tremour in his heart, he picked up the phone. His own hand, shaking, embarassed him.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Hey, man.” Came the most jocular voice he had ever heard. It seemed almost comforting to Fritz, although there seemed to be a nervousness in it that, of course, might have been his own.

“Who...?” he repeated.

A brief pause betrayed a moment's hesitation on the other end's part.

“Did you call for me?”

This struck Fritz, immediately, as incredibly haunting. Then he put two and two together.

“Is this the Tech guy?”

“Yeah, totally, dude.” Fritz could have sworn he heard a moment's withdrawn disdain in the man's voice, but then he wondered HOW he might have heard that.

“Where were you all day?” Fritz tried to sound curt, but not alienating, although he knew himself to be in the right,

He thought he heard something like chewing on the other end. “Don't know what you mean, man. Want   me to look at something?” This time, Fritz was practically sure that the other was almost mocking him. Keeping his head cool, Fritz asked, “What's your name, anyway? James?” He remembered the receptionist.

“Jake.” The guy, or kid, as Fritz thought would be a more adequate description of him, sounded distracted and slightly, but indifferently, off put by the mistake.

“Will you come up here?” Fritz asked. He looked out the window at the black sky outside. If he could get away with it, he would sleep here. Knowing that at least one other guy was in the building made him suddenly not miss his apartment at all.

Another pause. “Umm,” he sounded like he was chewing chow mein or something, “What's wrong with coming down here?”

“Okay, honestly. I was looking for you all day. I think you owe me a visit. No offence.” Fritz felt himself suspended in time. A moment passed, and then he heard a snicker. He became angry.

“Okay, what is funny?” He wished that Jake What's-his-name could see his furrowed brow.

“Aww, no man I was just...” and his voice was interrupted by another guffaw.

Christ, Fritz blasphemed to himself, he's watching t.v.

“Okay,” Fritz gathered his soundness of mind. “Well, just so you know, I'm coming down there now. Now, if you want to meet me halfway: feel free to. I would just strongly advise that you do because guess what? If you don't, I'll let Stephanie know. She's not going to be happy either way, but there's no way in... there's just no way I'm taking the blame for this. I'm sorry, Jake, but: This is your job.”

Pause.

“Who's Stephanie?”

What an idiot.

The walk down the spine of the building was really no different from any of the other walks, according to Fritz's objective mind. His subjective mind, however, was unscrupulous. He felt like he were already being chased by some maniac. He found himself, momentarily, fantasising that he were a prisoner of war somewhere. This was done with the intent of clearing away the terror. Then he thought of what would happen if an actual terrorist captured him, and he felt worse. He walked close to the angularly spiraling rail whenever he passed by a door, too terrified to check if any one of them was locked, but fully prepared to leap over should someone emerge from it. Then he reasoned that, if some intruder emerged from any one of the doors either above or below him, he would be entirely hosed. He began to check every door. Some of them were locked. Others looked out over rows of corridors upon which the deep blue light of the city settled. It would have been a comforting sight in any other situation, but he kept shutting the door behind him immediately upon each examination. He did so before a silhouette could emerge from one of the cubicles. None appeared, however. All the way down the thirty-story building, he tried keeping count of which doors were open and which were locked. He was still trying to remember when he reached Jake's floor.

The red corridor seemed almost absurdly comforting. For the first time in maybe his life, he felt a sense of almost adventurousness in finding this strange red corridor whose entire character, standing now in juxtaposition to his deepest fears, lending an almost asylum, as it stood apart in its own, albeit inexplicable and absurd, dignity.

As he passed the door on his right, he suddenly felt almost a sense of panic swipe over him, and he had to make a considerable effort to efface it from his mind. If I get my marbles back, he thought, I'm definitely Not letting this happen again. As he passed the door to his right, he felt something even stranger, and therefore more terrifying. His mind was cast inexplicably back to Stephanie. For some reason, he pictured her sitting at a magistrate's table and having claws.

Arriving at the door labeled “Tech Support Lab”, he knocked without interruption.

“Hello?! Hello??” He didn't care that he was yelling.

No one answered.

He tried again. “JAKE!” He was even stunned, momentarily, by his own aggression. It felt almost like someone else within him had yelled it.

No answer. He pressed his ear to the door. There were no sounds within. Did the son of a bitch go home? He could not believe it. Then he thought: Well, I don't believe it. This is bullshit. I need to know.

He raced back up the stairs, giving up on remembering the doors.

He tried calling Jake. He had the number inscribed on a tiny sticky-note. “Hello?” came Jake's voice, within a few rings.

“Jake! Dude.” Fritz almost laughed exasperatedly. “Where the hell are you? Aren't you in the Tech Lab?”

“Yeah, bro.”

“Where is it? I think I've been going to the wrong place this whole time!! I'm such an idiot.” A sense of comfort settled in his stomach. Parts of Fritz's body unclenched. It almost felt, in fact, as though a warm glow had set in within the office.

“Dude, it's on the fuckin'... you know where the Basement is?”

“Yes,” Fritz said, excitedly.

“Yeah. So you just go down the corridor.”

“Okay, wait. What colour is the corridor?”

“Uhh, hold on... it's red.”

Whatever warmth Fritz might have felt now felt like only a sterile memory pushed aside and put at the distance of objectivity. “How many red corridors ARE there?”

“Just one, dude.”

“And... you're There. Is that correct?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, honestly: What the hell? Where were you four minutes ago?”

“Been here, dude.”

[Dm.A.A.]

Hierarchy.

Hierarchy.

I am beginning to recall why I gave up on trying to be a Game Designer. Anthony once called me an "idea guy" as a mark of derision, and as usual I ignored him. I mean: Ideas are every thing. Deleuze was right: some people go there entire lives without ever having an Idea. Others spend entire lives developing their Ideas into ornate, beautiful philosophies and works of literature and other Art.

It's not so with games now. An "idea guy" is not an honorific, regardless, I am sure, of philosophical education. Will Smith's character from Six Degrees of Separation was right: the Imagination has become debased, a referent to some thing outside our selves, a synonym for STYLE.

I would not mind learning Unity if there were no programmers in San Diego. But how many one-man bands are there out there who are any good? I never learned drums, but I knew drummers. I never learned how to direct. But I knew directors. I never learned how to teach, but I knew teachers. I never knew how to preach. But I knew preachers!

So this is what breaks my heart. That these people say you have to start by programming before you can try to pitch your Art. That Ideas are the special PROVINCE of the Elite. And that programming is such a great Dignity that it is, ironically, a posture of slavery. For only the Experienced Programmers are allowed to have an Idea, and if you don't like that you can go develop your own ideas on your own. You know. Like they're just oranges or some thing.

And lowest on this totem is the Pure Theorist. Some one who only designs but does not create. You would think that people as introverted as game developers would value these Platonic Souls if any thing more so than the Aristotlean ones. Yet whilst there IS this kind of Philosopher King syndrome going on, where the leader is the Idea Man, the director the screen-writer, the frontman the song-writer, etc, there is little if any respect for Ideas As Such. And that is what disturbs me. Because of course any literate person knows that the works of man are suffused with good and bad ideas, and beyond that copies of copies, and archetypes and stereotypes and other types. But does one give up on literature unless it is PRACTICAL? Does one say: opinions are cheap. Books are either manuals or paper for burning? Or does one try actually to scout out good Idea People like one scouts out talent? For after all not any one can do it, and not any one who can has the will to. Art is Hard! And plotting a book is of comparable difficulty to writing code. Writing the book is just the laborious part. It is not necessarily the challenging part. Sigh.

It must be Resentiment. Envy. These people idealise Idea People, appointing them to positions of Leadership, but only granted that the Idea Person is One of Them. So then there can be no fair division of labour in their group because even though some people are humble enough to admit that they have neither the brilliance to be concept artists nor the patience to write code, even they are so humble that they can only follow the group's hierarchical agenda.

And why the hazing? I have attended Game Jams when all these rules were broken. I ended up helping out with Autodesk and Music, as well as concept art and theme. Every one did a little, but no one did every thing. No one even did a little of every thing. Yet as the Taoists would have posited, Everything Got Done. And we had so much fun doing it.

May be this is just an other code we have to break. An other boss we have to beat. Sigh.

Dm.A.A.

INTERFERENCE. Part One: Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven

Fritz was not allowed to leave the building, but he knew that there must be tech support somewhere in the building. He scoured the building, avoiding asking anyone for instructions, until he found the office of the tech support guy according to a map in the main entrance lobby.

The tech guy lived in the basement. Fritz found this eerily amusing, although he was not in the mood for jokes. He descended the desolate staircase that ran like a backbone through the building, looking in every one of the six directions all the way down so as not to be caught unawares by either an intruder or Stephanie.

The Tech Support Lab was located at the end of a hallway that was inexplicably painted red. He had never been on this floor before, and it creeped him out. He knocked on the door. He wasn't sure if he should raise his voice to ask if anyone was there. There were only two other doors in the corridor, one also to his right, now facing back the way he came compulsively, and the other to his left, the two displaced at irregular intervals, the latter closer to him. He did not know what was behind them.

He lowered his voice, trying his best not to sound panicky. “Hello? Hello?” He sounded like an idiot, of course. No one answered.

He returned to the staircase. He expected to see someone on the stairs, but he did not.

Returning to the lobby, he asked the receptionist where the “Tech Support guy” was. The receptionist seemed mildly disconcerted by what he had said. He revised, “Tech Support person,” grinning awkwardly.

She told him that he was probably away on lunch. He asked if she could leave him a message. She agreed to, avoiding his eyes and losing herself in her computer. He envied her.

Come nine o'clock, Fritz had given up on finding the Tech Support person. Anxiety gnawing at him, he decided to work on his laptop. He would stow it every time he saw his supervisor come near the aisle bordering his cubicle. He knew that he probably looked unpardonably suspicious to the security cameras, but he knew he could do nothing about that. Whenever the supervisor came by, he called the Tech Support number that he got from the receptionist. He got no answer, but it made him look busy. The second time the supervisor passed by, he crawled under his desk and pretended to be examining the computer. The third time, he had extricated several screws from the computer, pretending they had fallen out, and showed them to his supervisor. The supervisor returned, several minutes later, to Fritz's shock, with a case of tools with which to put the screws back in.

Fritz did not even see Stephanie leave the building at nine. He could only presume she had. He had determined to try her door at 9 in the evening. Another fruitless visit to the receptionist, who had gone home, rendered him five minutes late in doing this. Her door was locked, however, so he presumed that  she had gone home.

Come ten o'clock, he reckoned that he must have been one of three people remaining in the building. There was definitely no one else on his floor.

Dm.A.A.

Dependency:

What is the Self? If you would define it by monetary self-sufficiency, then it is simply a Corporate Conspiracy. If you define it by a Soul that carries Sin around, then you are just dependent upon the Church. If it is defined by one’s possessions, it is only a measure of one’s Greed. If by one’s accomplishments, then just one’s Pride. If by one’s sexual exploits, one’s own lust. The very Church that condemns your Soul for Sin nurtures the very Sin its self!

All that rests in this Universe and all that moves is influenced by every other thing. Ties both visible and invisible, perceptible and imperceptible, BIND us. Yet they all so LIBERATE us. For if you are dependent upon Slaves but you deny it, then you are a parasite, and a slave to your own parasitism. If you depend upon foreign countries, spiteful farmers with whom you have stricken an ungenerous bargain that can only feed half your people and even less of theirs, then you are such a parasite.

But if you depend only upon the Universe, then you draw Life from the Universe, and all other life draws that same Life Force from you. And only then are you free of bondage, for you are neither Master then, nor Slave.

Dm.A.A.

The Information Age:

I miss you.

Your insanity and lack of self-entitlement are a warm glow in a bleak castle. The only thing better than Solitude that I have found.

I was playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons today with several friends. One I had first met in the fourth grade. He has not changed since. Cannabis helped. An other I first met in High School. His belle I met last winter, quite by fortune. Albeit was in Rancho Bernardo, so not unlikely in such a small town. The Dungeon Master I only met today. I guessed immediately he was a Leo. The guess was correct.

This was my first game, but I took it by storm. I played under the name of Radagast. You should recognise that name. The Brown Wizard. It was not long ere I felt alienated from my "peers" whence they mentioned some thing about a man who had ostensibly cracked a Nazi code long ago. I felt a pang of skepticism that I could not first place. At first I thought it might be guilt for having criticised homosexuals when last I met with Andrew. But it was by the time that Blake and I went out for pizzas at the local Costco (one that I had not visited before, to my delight upon that beautiful sunlit day in Poway) that I realised, standing with the pizzas in my hand ere Blake re-fillt his gasoline, that I had felt neither moral indignation nor anomie, but simply DOUBT. How Had They Known that the genius was homosexual? They admitted that he had had sociopathic tendencies, but homosexuality had not fallen under their umbrella, all though of course it was deemed unacceptable at that time. But how did they know? If they never bothered to investigate beyond what they had read, or only prolongued their research, and settled on the notion that he was a victim of his "time" (that they presumed, in a manner that Foucault would have found ironically repugnant, to have been "worse")  then how did they KNOW that he partook in those acts? Did he ever actually sodomise any one? Or was it psycho-analytically PRESUMED that he had INTENDED to? And if he was simply a "victim of his time", then why are there still statistics that purport that homosexuals are often sociopaths, even in these new and "enlightened" times of progress and development?

My crisis was not one of ethic but of fact. Not Should he have participated in an act of social deviance that his society had nothing to gain from and condemned, (and not much removed from many heterosexual acts in a common vein) nor Should he have Intended to, but DID he? Did he do it? Did he even intend?

There was a time when people were more skeptical, and it was not very long ago. To make a claim one had to tell a story. The scar all ways showed the evidence; the story was its meaning. And to learn about a writer. Why did he write? How? One had to visit the guy. Or woman. Obviously. And people DID! And not only rich people! Just ones who got out a bit and found out For Their Selves.

And how quick they were to call me a Luddite! Of course, they did not conjure the word immediately. And of course one who does not know etymology or who only Scans and does not READ would be hesitant to recall it. But earlier that same day I had thought of the Luddites, for whom we have named the word Sabotage. And I had not identified with them, but I would never have dreamt to condemn them! They simply were a product of THEIR society. And how do I know this? Because I read it in a book! And it accords with my research on the Internet. But it goes deeper than that. I have seen first-hand the conditions of retail, and they remind me of what I read about in my old books. It is not as though I suffered any cruel injuries. But seeing how people behave in the factory system, and knowing that this system endures to this day, I can totally believe that people would rebel against its encroaching industrialisation! In fact: I have no doubt of it. For there is no reason to doubt any thing that has so long been known. But when people condemn "Luddites" they do not condemn the System. They Side with the system and -- to use a millenial adage -- Blame the Victim!

So you can imagine an other pang I felt ere Blake said Tolkien was a poor author. And ultimately we settled it that that was simply Blake's preference. But just as he had sided with the corporations in condemning Luddism he sided with the critics in condemning Tolkien! Just because he was bored by the introduction. As though all books don't have a steady start. Well. All old books. Enduring books. Great ones.

And you know as a life-long reader I have read many prophesies of this time. Several had been as early on as in Tolkien's time, or Jung's, or even Nietzsche's! But millenials are a load of junk. Even Whearty. Rafael and I could tell that he did not READ for the love of the word! Only the information.

And I have to tell you. You are the first person in my generation next to my sister with whom I can conduct an intelligent controversation. Because you DOUBT. And not collectively. MOST people our age (and the ones who usually berate millenials are in their midst, though only a millenial would not be able to distinguish me from them) only Doubt until the corporatised scientific community that they so piously depend upon, as upon a clergy in a younger day, gives them the most recent "up-date". But where does it all come from? An earlier people would see science for what it is: merely philosophic common sense super-imposed over a set of privileged data. MILLENIALS take it to be Truth! And it does not seem to even Bother them, much less to strike fear in their hearts, that the information that they cling to NOW is so Unstable that within mere years it might be useless.

I don't know if the World has been around for six thousand years or longer. What I DO know is that a hundred years is not at all a long time. Nothing has changed. Philip K Dick honestly thought towards the end of his life that we were all living in the year 23 A.D. (Roughly), that the Roman Empire had never fallen, ("The Empire Never Fell!") and that Germany had won the War. Well. It could happen. I knew an old janitor at Palomar named Tyrone who had said that there was nothing new under the Sun. You can guess his religious leanings. This Nigger had gone to CAL! (i am not embarassed to use that word around you [not CAL obviously. Pardon my irony.] because MY progressive thought is all for liberating language rather than repressing it, and "fear of a name breeds fear of the thing its self.")

Nothing really substantially changes. Shawn is still Shawn. Blake is still Blake. I am still Dmytri. (Though before I was Dmitry.) Science and Religion still operate in hidden conspiracy, as do Liberals and Conservatives, but only a few like Nietzsche think to condemn them, and the rest Follow The Herd!!

And this does not intimidate me because it is new. It intimidates me because it is quite ironically Old! All this stuff Kresten and his faggot psychiatrist friend (I would with-hold the slur, were he not a psychiatrist) had parroted to me ages ago. Of course those ages were mere years ago. But that's my point exactly. I have grown over these years. The society has only festered. Nothing new under the Sun. All of it I've heard before, in some other permutation. Why does it intimidate me? Because Deleuze was right: information is control. And Fascism is pretty damned intimidating. They have all ready dampened our generation's interest in the records of the past. When I first encountered Jung, I was hesitant, as Watts had been, of his insistence upon a connection with the past. But I was only hesitant. Not skeptical. I wonder how many millenials use those words inter-changingly.

And Jung was the mystik who HEALED me! The anecdotal evidence in this witch doctor's favour was Miraculous! And what did that cock-sucking faggot that Kresten hung out with say about Jung?? That the man's theories were "disproven!" It's like: how does one DISPROVE a LIFE???

What finally ticked me off today (though most of it had gone so smoothly that it does not pain me much to reflect upon it presently) was when Blake, in a last and third and final trial, busted out his phone to "settle a dispute". You know. As though he were busting out a pistol. Fitting since I want to shoot some one each time that one does this. And I NEVER want to shoot ANY one!

Of course I Knew that scorpions were arthropods and not insects, but that insects were arthropods. I had studied paleontology in childhood and even taken a third place metal (okay okay: Medal.) in it in the sixth grade. I still have my field guide. And I had spent entire evenings re-scribing these onerous but much-beloved lists, so I would not have foregotten some thing so BASIC (not every one knows what an echinoderm is, and many might mistake a "sand dollar" in language for Middle Eastern currency, but most know what Scorpions and Crabs are, as astrology evidences) nor would I have pretended towards such knowledge and betrayed my self as a scholar. I even recall that later I would learn that Anurag Kashyap, who would go on to become the National Spelling Bee champion (and, by virtue of those coincidences I have told you about, my class-mate) had in fact stood beside me that day, and how he would brag with such charm when in high school he informed me that the "future spelling bee champion" had beaten me at my most shining pre-adolescent moment by one place. Not that it bothered me more then than it had that same day of the award ceremony, for I had been grateful then and nearly just as grateful for Anurag's fortune years later.
But I digress.

Have you ever seen this meme? It's a photo of a keyboard, I think with keys missing. It's a demotivational. Caption: Post-modernism. Sub-caption: Because your four years of education is just as good as some thing I read on wikipedia.

I thought they were only kidding. Imagine!!

It was not that Blake "wanted to know" that bothered me, but that he did not trust ME. So what if the state wanted to say that 2+2='d 5? Would they believe it.

I suppose if Science proves it.

But this shocks a man like me. Because when some bitch (humour me please) put me in a box (quite literally) and said that I had "bipolar disorder" (as if!) my Mother did not hesitate to seize the excuse. And neither did any of my family. But to this day my sister has to calm my Dad down from his angry out-bursts, my Mother randomly rages at whoever's closest to her in proximity (for she has bones to pick with all of us) and my sister broods and moods. Why would my Mother ever condemn her own son to marginalisation?

Because she read about it on the internet. Because she found a list of traits for bipolar, and quite glossing over the fact that EVERY BODY HAS THEM (at least at one point or an other) she was prone to project them Onto Me! And Kresten! Wasn't even there for me then, and yet he claims that I can't hold his behaviour against him since he knew Alexandra first. As though she were any thing like you! And as though he had even been LOYAL to me then! No. He simply sided with the gossip. And if it occurred to him as CRUEL to say he "saw more evidence" for the genetic predisposition towards schizophrenia than against it, then he was more guilty for having done so knowingly to try to impress you. He had once heard my dad hit me over the head with a remote! He was in the next room over. I had company over and my dad got mad at me for some thing. Why? I don't know. But Kresten tells ME that mental illness isn't the product of Conditioning? He was STUNNED that day when he had heard the crack on my head! Ostensibly his mother had never treated him that way, and obviously never his father, absentee as he was, f.b.o.f.w.

So you get my point. I could go on but I won't weigh upon you. I'll only cite some closing konklusions (again: pardon my macabre humour.).

First of all: none of this is new. Kierkegaard warned against it in the eighteen hundreds. Jung warned against it in the nineteen forties or whatever. Huxley warned against control by drugs, which I have borne personal witness to, both in the sense of recreationals and pharmaceuticals, for the mentality is not far removed. And he all so warnt of control by "technological devices". So am I the Luddite? No. I see technology as an organism. We can co-exist with it. But as Heidegger warned it is prone to use us. Let's not let it be a parasitic relationship. I compose electronic music and I use a phone. What Fascist bastards thought to condemn critics as hypocrites? We are the ones who struck a balance that they had not!

Secondly: as some one who has been hospitalised (and I am assured you are of a common spirit here) I can guarantee this as a ticket to the lunatic asylum: believing every thing you read. Buddha told us to question, and that probably saved my life. You'll rarely find it as an internet meme. You really have to dig to do so. There is, as a friend of mine named Lee said (who was quite a character and had apparently been involved in the development of e-mail), a hierarchical trichotomy (my words) betwixt information, knowledge, and Wisdom. If books are as good a source as internet articles, then I would all ways prefer some one who went straight to the printed text rather than one who took the short cut. And unlike Blake insists my skepticism is fact; one can conclude from skepticism alone, if "skepticism" is simply a polite way of calling bull shit but not having the patience nor the welcome to elaborate.

Last thing: (or "one more thing" as Jackie Chan's fictional sensei would have quoth) Knowledge and Wisdom are archetypal journeys. They do not change; only an unattended and neurotic ego obscures this. Who am I to say this? Here's a thought: I would value this Truth over my Friends Them Selves, for invariably those who had opposed me in What I Knew would join my oppressors, and I had learnt these facts from my oppressors themselves, in spite and rebellion against them. I am not a neurotic who crusades against the world. I am every bit as disadvantaged by the Machine as my Luddite brethren were. But I am not a Luddite. Like I said: my indignation is one of fact. Not affect. It is simply not an apt comparison, that is all. Only I am qualified to make such a comparison. For I have lived through it. And even so the distinction is in many ways remote.

So my concern is this. If Jung knew. If Buddha knew. If Huxley knew. If Plath knew. If Dr Englund knew. If Tom the portly guy who frequents Starbucks knew. If Lee knew. Then why don't WE know?

Because Fascism all ways severs ties with the past and re-writes history to its own liking. However cleverly gilded, it does not fool me. Now librarians use the internet as sources of Authority. So what? The moment I am to be judged by some thing you look up on your phone, I have been marginalised. You were right. Using one's phone is withdrawal. For genuine conversation is rare. I go now mainly to older folks for it. For they Listen. And they do not condemn me for talking to younger folks (usually), though the latter condemn me for appealing to the authority of the former. But I am simply literate enough to know a Genuine conversation once I've had it. And I'm old enough, in body as in spirit, to not be impressed with "new" ideas that do not FEEL new. And that fall into so many familiar traps.

What worries me most is what worried Jung most. What about the generation gap? Yes: we must re-write society to rebel against tradition. But what Truths lie beyond mere tradition? Surely old people who were once young have found some of them? They certainly seem more generous with their wisdom, and it looks more rare and precious. Do they throw these pearls before swine or men?

There are treasures in the ravine that separates the old from the young. And if we cannot bridge THAT gap, what connection can we find?

What I seek will not be found by Google. Google is but a tool. If it thinks for its self, I question its motives. I won't allow it to think for me.

I hope you have enjoyed this drunken rant. I assure you: I saved it just for you. Fitting since you have more direct influence over Google apparently.

I was the life of the party today by the way. Couldn't you tell? I'll recount my fictional adventures later. Have you noticed I am using the Singular Personal more so now than the Plural Personal? It is a mark of health surely. Not to call you Shirley. Surely is an all too common word.

You should be able to tell from my confidence that I was very enthusiastic, even if I felt a bit hazed. So be it. That habit too had never gone away. And I still got my skeptic's independence, an excuse to defy my friends. You understand. I am feeling very ENFP presently.

All my love. Dmytri.